Bike trade tweeps

NOTE: the article beneath the list of bike folks using Twitter was written in November 2008 and, in parts, has not aged well. However, the list of 'tweeps' is constantly updated with the latest bike-related 'tweeters'.

As of 16th September 2009 this list contained 749 names: click to see their profile pages and hit 'follow' to add them to your list. The names are listed chronologically, not alphabetically, i.e. the earlier the name appears in a list, the earlier that person or brand joined Twitter.

Here's a selection of bike Twitterati, with direct clicky-clicky links to their Twitter accounts. If you're in the bike trade or have a bike blog, or ride for a living, or you're in one of the other categories and you want to appear on this list (or want to tell me of somebody we've missed), please get in touch: @carltonreid

You may not want to blog, but you may want to Tweet. You may want to do both.

Tweet? Get out of here! Twitter.com may have a flippant name but it's rapidly become one of the most popular 'social media' websites out there. You sign up for an account and 'follow' individuals interesting to yourself. They, in turn, may 'follow' you.

When you follow somebody you get regular soundbites from them, and you can write soundbites of your own.

You have 140 characters to play with per 'tweet'. You can flog your latest product ("sale now on, last few widgets remaining") or show your human side ("slurping the first Java of the day").

As you'd expect, a number of tech businesses jumped on the Twitter bandwagon early. Some bike businesses have also been on awhile. Many fade away, others stick it out and are seeing the benefits as the 'Twitterverse' - the online world of Twitter users - expands.

The business case for using Twitter is growing. Here’s how a US coffee shop doubled its clientele through clever and proactive use of Twitter. And a pizza shop shows how to ramp up sales.

Independent coffee shops and pizza outlets have to battle multiples and need to be flexible and creative, yet without huge marketing budgets. Sound familiar?

Bike shops and suppliers can auto contact folks on Twitter who mention bikes - or other keywords - in their locality, or global. It's from a free service called TwitterHawk.

Tweets can be written - and read - from Twitter.com or from any number of 'clients' built for the Blackberry or the iPhone or for online aggregation, via third party apps such as Tweetie or Twhirl. You can become a power user by installing TweetDeck.

Lance Armstrong is a convert to Twitter. He Twitters from his Blackberry and has 50,000 Twitter followers but doesn't follow many back [UPDATE: he does follow more people now, and is also good for confirming which pro riders on Twitter are real and which are fakes. He's nearly got 1m followers]. So, while not much social interaction with Armstrong is going to happen, you get to read personal stuff (you'll know when he wakes up for instance, I got a ping about this a minute ago) and will also get up-to-the-minute coverage of his racing. Yesterday he wrote: "Just finished Greune. Hard effort. Been awhile since I've done that."

This was a US time trial and readers of his Tweets knew exactly when he was carbo loading the day before. (Will he later psyche out his roadie opponents with false Tweets about the number of times he's climbed Mont Ventoux that day?)

Armstrong's trainer Chris Carmichael is also now Tweeting. He revealed Armstrong won the time trial: "Lance won Tour de Greune TT. Not a bad performance but still a long way to go to TdF fitness. Going to the wind tunnel soon!"

But it's not all performance talk. Tweets can also flesh out people's personal lives. How else would we know that Carmichael's kids dressed him up for Hallow'een?

"Going soon with the kids trick or treating...My son has me dressed up as a giant whoopie cushion!"

Is this too much personal information? Stop following the individual concerned.

But, before you think Twitter is just for teenybopper 'my favourite food' style anecdotes, there's plenty of useful stuff on there, too. There are news channels to subscribe to (BBC, CNN, Sky News etc) and Twitter-only news channels which often break news stories before they appear in the mainstream media. Want to know about earthquakes in Taichung, bike factory central, before the media reports about them? Get yourself on Twitter.

BikeBiz Job of the Week

BikeBiz has a commitment to retail that goes beyond just ensuring that every store receives the magazine every month. The editorial team prides itself on its coverage of retail - from debating issues to providing information that will aid sales.